Word: alyosha
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sixth novel Read has traveled abroad and into history for a theme, attempting to write what could be thought of as his Brothers Karamazov, Polish-style. Stefan Kornowski−saint, sinner, intellectual−is Alyosha-Dmitri-Ivan all in one. The son of a ruined count, he moves into a shabby Warsaw apartment when the family country home is lost in the late 1920s. But while his sister, 17, goes to work in a jeweler's shop, Stefan, 15, manages the ultimate Dostoyevskian luxury: "Playing the role of the sort of person he ought to be." He dabbles...
...Alyosha, a nineteen-year-old soldier away from home for the first time, is rewarded for an act of bravery at the front by being granted six days leave to travel home and see his mother. The war is going very badly--apparently this takes place in the Fall of 1941--and the film is the story of Alyosha's odyssey, journeying from the collapsing front lines back into the heartland of Russia. He is sidetracked during the trip by several isolated episodes. He comes to the aid of a soldier who, having lost a leg in combat, is afraid...
Gregori Chukhrai, who directed the film, emphasizes the individual suffering of all the characters, gives a tragic portrait of a whole people whose lives are disrupted by war. Alyosha, whose naive heroism and perpetual optimism are particularly pathetic in light of his impending death, is an example of wasted potential. He is a man who is only beginning to realize his capacity for friendship, and for love...
Chukhrai does not hesitate to create sentimental scenes: Shura and Alyosha waving to each other as his train pulls away, Alyosha's mother running breathless and perspiring from her work in the fields to greet him. But somehow, in this context, anything less than sentimentality would be unsatisfactory. War has torn a society apart, and for a few brief moments its victims are struggling to recapture a past forever lost, or discover experiences never known. Absent is the business-as-usual optimism of most American films about the Second World War. There is a sense in Ballad of a Soldier...
...Alyosha began to speak of the secrets